I Swear I'm Not Making This Up: Shakira Was Attacked By a Sea Lion

I Swear I’m Not Making This Up: Shakira Was Attacked By a Sea Lion

Shakira was attacked by a sea lion in South Africa. For reals. What?!

-Lucia Peters

No, really: Shakira was attacked by a sea lion. This is so weird and hilarious that there’s no way I could make it up.

According to People, the singer was hanging out with her brother in Cape Town, South Africa when they spotted a bunch of sea lions capering about on Sunday afternoon. And what do you do when you witness sea lions doing crazy things? You take pictures, of course. Lots of them.

But unfortunately, Shakira failed to realize that sea lions, like humans, have personal space bubbles—and she overstepped the boundaries. While she was attempting to pet one of them (because of course petting unpredictable wild animals is such a wonderful idea, isn’t it?), one of them decided that it reeeeeeally didn’t want her getting that close to it. She wrote on Facebook, “Suddenly, one of them jumped out of the water so fast and impetuously that it got about one foot away from me, looked me in the eye, roared in fury and tried to bite me.” She froze, terrified; but luckily for her, her brother, whom she called “Super Tony,” sprang into action and dragged her away from the sea lion.

Shakira went on to say that she thinks the sea lion might have be reacting to her Blackberry, which she was using to snap her pictures: “I believe what happened is that it confused the shiny reflection of the blackberry I was taking these pics with, with some sort of fish. It probably thought I was teasing it with food and then taking it away from it.”

But hey, it’s all okay. Tony suffered some minor scratches from leaping over some jagged rocks, but everyone’s fine now. And look! Shakira got to hang out with some penguins later on!:

I don’t know about you, Bettys, but I’ll take penguins over sea lions any day.